


Homesick

by 5kenx5



Series: Disintegration [1]
Category: Fifth Harmony (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Diary/Journal, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-08
Updated: 2017-10-23
Packaged: 2018-12-24 23:09:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 7,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12023007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/5kenx5/pseuds/5kenx5
Summary: She was always a sucker for a good love story.So I guess that’s what this is. I guess it’s just me trying to hold on a little longer by doing something so her. I’m trying to feel close to her and find closure and just, make our story real, maybe - make it tangible. I’m leaving a piece of her in the world for somebody else to find, leaving the epic love story she always wanted to tell in this crappy journal for a stranger to read.//Give it a shot - at least read to the second chapter. It's a good pain.





	1. 3.2.15//1

**Author's Note:**

> I promise I haven't forgotten about Gold Dust Woman I just suck at writing happy things so I need to get this all out of my system before I can write a deserving ending for that one. Have some patience with me please ): 
> 
> If you haven't read Gold Dust Woman or my other fic, Empty Gold (recently completed) check them out! 
> 
> Aside from my shameless self promo, I hope you enjoy this. It's a therapeutic type of pain, I think. Let me know what you all think about it! (: Stick through to the second chapter before you make your decision about reading it, at least. You can't miss the story of the "Great Laurinah Feud of 2009." 
> 
> Happy hurting!

_ 3.2.15 _

 

_ I don’t really know what I’m doing. _

_ It’s been three months and I still miss her.  _

_ She would’ve been eighteen tomorrow. And maybe that’s why these past couple of days felt like I was slipping backwards - regression, my therapist would’ve called it. But I don’t think I’m  _ regressing,  _ I just think that her birthday is coming up and it feels weird and wrong and confusing that I’m here for it and she’s not.  _

_ I don’t feel like I’m slipping away again; I feel like she is.  _

_ Dinah says I should do something stupidly dramatic to feel close to her again - she always was a drama queen. She loved the big, romantic gestures, the cliches. And more than anything else, she loved stories. She wanted to be writer - even promised me she’d write our story one day.  _

_ She was always a sucker for a good love story.  _

_ So I guess that’s what this is. I guess it’s just me trying to hold on a little longer by doing something so  _ her.  _ I’m trying to feel close to her and find closure and just, make our story real, maybe - make it tangible. I’m leaving a piece of her in the world for somebody else to find, leaving the epic love story she always wanted to tell in this crappy journal for a stranger to read.  _

_ It’s fitting, too. She gave me that journal for my fourteenth birthday and I never wrote in it because I  _ don’t  _ write. She was the writer. And now here we are. I’m writing her story - our story - in the same damn journal all these years later. _

_ She’d love that - find it poetic, or some shit. I don’t know.   _

_ Maybe this is stupid and I should’ve just brought flowers to her grave like everyone else did.  _

_ I don’t think I could, though. I haven’t even been back there since the funeral. It was a disaster. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to go back.  _

_ Her parents wanted open-casket and I thought it would feel good to see her, like it’d bring me closure or something to  _ see  _ that she was really gone.  _

_ It didn’t. _

_ I threw up right next to the empty plot, all dry heaving and stomach acid - I hadn’t eaten solid food in two days. My throat was raw, felt like hot metal, and I thought for sure it would’ve burned right through the grass and all the way down into wherever she was going, but it didn’t; it just soaked into the soil and disappeared. _

_ I wrote a eulogy for her - I know, it’s weird:  _ Me,  _ writing.  _ Again.  _ Her dad had to finish reading it for me though, because I choked on her name three words in and started hyperventilating. I thought they’d be mad that I  interrupted the service with like, forgetting how to breathe and all, but they weren’t. Her dad just took the wrinkled paper out of my hand and read it while my mom tried to calm me down. _

_ I hate that it took her sister holding my hand for me to relax. I should’ve been comforting  _ her -  _ not the other way around.  But they have the same eyes and I held her hand the whole time they lowered the casket into the ground because I thought for sure I’d jump in behind her if I didn’t have that little hand squeezing mine and keeping me on the bench.  _

_ I was such a mess. My mom was afraid to touch me, I think. I’m glad she was there, though, because when her mom and dad and sister lined up to drop a handful of dirt over her body, they pulled me right up there with them. I was last, and I swear to God I tried to let go, but I just couldn’t. My mom had to pry it out of my fist and then she hugged me so tight I almost stopped breathing again. I don’t know if she was trying to comfort me or herself, but it felt good anyway.  _

_ My mom hadn’t held me like that - like she loved me - since I told her I had a girlfriend. That was three years ago. _

_ I finally snuck off behind a mausoleum when I couldn’t take it anymore. I guess her cousin had the same idea. I don’t even remember his name, but he had his lips wrapped around something in a brown paper bag  and I didn’t hesitate to do the same when he offered it forward. I don’t remember much after that,  Nothing until my mom’s car was wrapped around a pole in the parking lot. I guess I stole her keys and tried to leave. That’s what I told them, anyway.  _

_ I still wonder if maybe I meant to drive into the pole the whole time.  _

_ I don’t know. But I know I can’t go back there. I can’t. So here I am, writing to a stranger instead. Maybe one day I’ll find a way to tell it to the world. But for now, I’m telling you.  _

_ I hope you enjoy our story. _

_ I know I did _ . 

_ -Hers, forever & always.  _


	2. 3.2.15 // 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And that's how the Great Laurinah Feud of 2009 - as Dinah likes to call it - was born ~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope the story interests you enough to keep you reading. Let me know what you think. Thanks for reading!

_3.2.15_

 

_It all started with a girl - doesn’t every great story?_

_It wasn’t_ her _, though. It wasn’t me either. This girl was the one and only Dinah Jane Hansen._

 _It was seventh grade and I thought Dinah was the single most obnoxious person I'd ever met.  She also happened to be in every single one of my classes. I knew who she was - we’d gone to the same school since third grade - but we had different friends in different circles so I’d never really_ talked _to her, and then suddenly she was everywhere._

 _There was nothing inherently_ bad _about Dinah. She was nice and friendly and outgoing. The problem was that_ I _wasn’t. I'm still not. But it was different back then._

 _It was in our third period choir class when I finally decided I couldn’t handle her Dinah-ness. And it wasn’t even her fault, really. She wasn’t doing anything different than usual. It was just all her friends were in that class, singing a crappy rendition of some Taylor Swift song, and I had (another) big fight with my mom before school so I was just_ not _in the mood to hear the unharmonized screeching of six teenagers belting out a cheap pop song._

_I told them to shut up_ _and then I realized immediately that Dinah had a not-so-friendly side as well._

_And that’s how the Great Laurinah Feud of 2009 - as Dinah likes to call it - was born._

_It was offhand comments and angry glares, at first - just a week of passive aggressive whispers and glances. It put me off._

_I finally heard her whispering with some red head whose name I still don’t care to know in our sixth period English class and we both wound up in detention by the time the teacher managed to stop the string of expletives spilling from my mouth. She had plans after school that day and wasn’t too pleased that she had to cancel them to sit in a room with me and Mr. Healy - our math teacher._

_She called me a few creative names - my favorite is still ‘gothic death child,’ even now - and I pretty much brushed it off with nothing more than a few insults of my own muttered back under my breath. Not that she would’ve understood what ‘jinetera’ or ‘come mierda’ or ‘singao’ really meant anyway._

_She did, however, manage to catch ‘puta’ somewhere in there. And I guess she knew that one, because then she jumped out of her seat and told me I was the bitch for landing her in detention - that just because my mom didn’t care if I came home or not didn’t mean her family didn’t need her there._

_I didn’t know how much she had going on at home, or I probably would’ve left it there. But she brought up my_ mom _and I forgot I was supposed to count to ten. Mr. Healy had to pull me away from her and he cut detention short because clearly it was causing more problems than it was solving._

_Dinah took that as Mr. Healy siding with me._

_And we were both too stubborn to just leave it alone._

_Her soccer team and my softball team played at the same park on Saturdays and she managed to kick the ball straight into the second baseman’s face in the middle of a scrimmage._

_I was the second baseman._

_I’m glad my outfielders were paying attention, because it took both right_ and _center to keep me from charging at her with my bat in tow. Our short stop was terrified._

_Looking back, though, it was a great fucking shot. I can’t believe she landed it._

_That isn’t what I was thinking about at the time, though. I just wanted to get even._

_I turned her in online for bullying me. Low blow, I know. But our school was never too strict with bullying, so I figured she’d only get RPCed, at most. Didn't matter though; it backfired._

_How was I supposed to know that Dinah had a perfect record?_

_Mr. Reid, the principal, pretty much decided I was the bully and not the bullied (_ apparently _I had quite a thick file, whatever that means), and we both found ourselves in detention. With Mr. Healy. Again._

_I really wish I knew then how much responsibility Dinah had at home._

_But I didn’t. So I pushed at her until she slapped me. And then Mr. Healy gave her another full week_ _of detention and it was the first and only time I've ever seen Dinah cry and beg for anything. I almost told him he saw it wrong and she didn’t touch me, but I sort of felt like I won, so I kept my mouth shut and I thought it was over._

_For 4 days, I didn’t see Dinah outside of class and she didn’t acknowledge my existence inside class and I really thought it was over._

_Turns out, it wasn’t. Dinah was on the dance team with my best friend, and that got me a twenty four hour warning before I walked into school the next day as the girl who slept with  Mr. Healy._

_I was barely thirteen._

_And yet, thirteen year old me still had to sit at a table with my math teacher, my principal, and my parents - explaining why the whole school seemed to think I was sleeping with the new math teacher.  I don’t know why I didn’t just throw Dinah under the bus then and there, but I didn’t. I told them I had no idea and then Mr. Reid told us that he had no choice by to suspend Mr. Healy._

_Dinah busted into Mr. Reid’s office the second I told her she ruined a man’s life and confessed to the whole thing. She got suspended instead before any information about Mr. Healy got around, so he kept his job and his reputation and Dinah had to spend the rest of the year at a behavior school while the the girl that I’d later realize was the love of my life lost who was essentially her body guard._

_And so that’s how it all started - with the Great Laurinah Feud of 2009._

_-Hers, forever & always._


	3. 3.2.15//3

> _3.2.15_

 

_It’s funny, really, how long it took me to notice her._

_Dinah had been gone for a couple of months and we were only two weeks from winter break and that was honestly the only thing on my mind. I forgot all about Dinah and her obnoxiously large group of obnoxious friends that just always had to go around being obnoxious. I didn’t spare them a second thought until I left my pre-algebra class fifteen minutes early to meet with my counselor (I had straight As, why did they care about my attendance?) when I first saw her._

_I mean, I probably saw her before that - she was Dinah’s best friend, after all - but I never_ noticed _her until then._

 _She was sitting at the foot of the stairs crying, and I was tempted to just ignore her and keep walking, but something compelled me to stop so I did. I asked her if she was okay and I’ll never forget the look on her face.  She looked at me like I’d just spoken the most ridiculous words she’d ever heard. I  remember the way she said it - “why do you care? It’s your fault.” - her eyes still watery and her voice shaky and her shoulders drooped but she was still so_ defiant. _She ran off before I could ask what the hell she was talking about. I wish I would’ve chased her, but I didn’t know._

_So I dropped it and went to meet my counselor,_

_After that, I saw her everywhere. I saw her in the hallway and the cafeteria and the library and she just looked...dejected. I couldn’t stop thinking about what she said, about how whatever made her cry was my fault . It only took me a week to finally break down and ask, when I bumped into her running out of the bathroom with tears in her eyes. And then it all made sense._

_Dinah Jane. Dinah Jane was_ gone.

_Sixth grade was rough for her.  She did something - and neither of us ever figured out what - to get on wrong side of the wrong people, and they pretty much terrorized her until Dinah came along. But once she did, Brad and his pathetic team of middle school jocks (like, who even cared about a sixth grade flag football team and their cheerleaders?) knew well enough to stay away. So she hid behind her best friend like a shield until she got expelled because we both had to be petty ._

_I felt bad, - bad enough to basically stalk the girl. I was thirteen, okay? It seemed like a good idea at the time._

_Besides, I thought I was sneaky._

_I wasn’t._

_Three days into my creeping she finally confronted me to just leave her alone. Told me she wasn’t my charity case and she didn’t want my pity and again I saw that little spark in her eyes - that same little flick of_ defiance. _And it was that moment, the moment she told me to leave her alone, that I knew I never would._

 _I knew I never_ could.

_That was five years ago, and really, I still haven't._

_I guess I’ve always been stubborn that way._ _So Instead of backing off, like she told me, I broke Kylie Jenner’s nose._

 _My mom was_ not _happy. (My dad thought it was hilarious). I didn’t get expelled, like I thought I would,  because it happened over winter break and was off school property, but I did have to get switched into a new pre-algebra class because we weren’t allowed to be in class together anymore. So I got moved out of Mr. Healy’s class (I think he was thankful) and into Ms. Lovato’s class . With_ her.

_The way she glared at me made my skin burn and I couldn’t really figure out why. I couldn’t figure out why I cared or why I punched Kylie or why this girl even mattered because our only conversations were her telling me to leave her alone. I couldn’t figure out why I flinched every time somebody approached her or why I still asked her if she was okay every day even though she ignored me. I couldn’t figure out why it bothered me._

_I was thirteen. And_ stupid.

_I finally got her to crack one day though, when Austin dragged his chair to her desk and I dragged it right back._

_Ms. Lovato was in the middle of a lesson and the class was supposed to be taking notes. I watched him scoot his chair to her desk and I seemed to forget all about where I was. All I knew was that he played flag football with Brad and that meant he couldn’t_ do that - _be next to her like that_ . _So I stood up and walked across two rows of desks and dragged his chair - with him still  in it - right back where it came from._

 _I walked back to my desk and sat down without a word. The whole class was staring at me, even the teacher went silent, but I didn't even notice them._ She _smiled at me. It was small and only lasted half a second, but it was a smile._

_She smiled at me._

_And it was everything._

_-Hers, forever & always._


	4. 3.3.15

_3.3.15_

 

_Today is her birthday. Or, it would’ve been. She would’ve been eighteen._

_We were supposed to be doing something stupid today - buying cigarettes even though neither of us smoke, or getting tattoos we’d probably regret in a few years, or, I don't know, buying lottery tickets and opening bank accounts and buying a shotgun just because we_ could. 

_Hell, I would’ve even married her today if she let me._

_Her family is going to the cemetery. They invited me (they always do), but I can’t go back there yet. I just want to keep living in these memories where she’s still_ here _with me_.

_So I guess I’ll pick up where I left off._

_After that day, when I got Austin away from her, she softened to me a little bit. She didn’t go out of her way to see me or anything, but she smiled every morning from her seat in pre-algebra and I thought maybe that meant we could be friends someday._

_And it happened slowly. Smiles turned into hellos and hellos turned into small talk and pretty soon, the trees were starting to change color again and we were sharing a lunch table._

_She thought I only hung out with her because I felt guilty for Dinah leaving. I thought she only let me near her because Brad and Kylie were both afraid of me._

_We were both So. Fucking. Stupid._

_But eventually, she learned to stand up for herself. I didn’t need to be her knight in a shining leather jacket and she still kept me around. I know I was only thirteen and I know she still had another month of being twelve, but I think we loved each other even back then. I don’t care how young we were._

_I probably would’ve fallen in love with her just the same if we met in pre-school._

_We were both so wrapped up in each other, though, that we didn’t even realize it was happening. She waited for me in front of the school every morning, and I always walked her to her first class. We ate lunch together every day and walked home from school together every afternoon. I went the long way so I could walk her to her house before going to mine._

_We were just...so consumed by each other. And we were too young to even know it._

_And then if it were even possible, we got closer over summer. She came to every one of my softball games and I spent every weekend at her house all of the sudden it was the night before we started eighth grade and I couldn’t remember a single thing I did over the summer without her. It terrified me, because starting eighth grade meant Dinah was coming back and that meant I had to sit with Normani at lunch._

_I didn’t have anything against Mani - she was my_ best friend - _but it didn’t hit me until that moment that I didn’t see her once all summer and that meant lunch was definitely going to be awkward._

 _Only, it wasn’t. Because when I got to lunch on the first day of school, Dinah was sitting at our table deep in conversation with Normani and Ally was laughing with Alexa and Mariella was showing Keana a picture on her phone and there_ she _was, smiling at me all the way up to those wide brown eyes like she was proud of herself for bringing our little groups together._

_Dinah looked at me as soon as I sat down and I panicked for a second, thinking she was going to take it all away, but then I felt a soft hand grab mine under the table and Dinah just smiled a genuine smile at me and everything was perfect._

_It was the most perfect thing I’d ever felt because Dinah smiled at me like she was approving something and even though I had no idea_ what, _it felt like she lifted a weight off my shoulders._

_She was the best friend - her approval meant everything._

_I just didn't realize it yet._

_-Hers, forever & always. _


	5. 3.5.15//1

_3.5.15_

 

_They mentioned her in the assembly at school today._

_It’s barely been three months and she’s already been reduced to a line in a fucking speech. They talked about how sad it is, how much the school loved her, how much everyone misses her._

_I thought I was going to start hyperventilating again._

_Dinah held me tight against her and I think that’s the only reason I didn’t fall apart completely. Dinah held me and Mani squeezed my hand and Ally rubbed my back and it felt kind of like duct tape around my chest - like it was just enough to keep my heart from falling out but it was messy and temporary and eventually the tape would fall off._

_I really hope I’m all sewn back together by the time it does. She’d never forgive me if I fell apart because of her and i don’t want to let her down. I’m trying._

_It’s hard. Every single day it’s hard. But I’m trying._

_And I think this is helping - getting this all out, sharing it with someone. Telling you a story I’m so beyond lucky to have. It’s like I’m reliving it with her. It’s solidifying the memories, I guess. Writing it down on paper kind of makes it feel immortal._

_She always said you could live forever in a story._

_I’m starting to think maybe she was right._

_So it was the second week of eighth grade when I kissed her._

_We were at the beach - there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the September sun was just as bright as ever. She kept fussing over sunscreen because my shoulders were starting to turn pink but I was young and I didn’t care about a stupid sunburn. I just wanted to get in the water with my friends._

_I dragged her in the water with me and we swam all the way out to the buoys until the life guards yelled at us to go back.  Dinah teased us all day about trying to swim across the ocean together. We all took pictures with our feet in the sand and had an overpriced lunch on the pier and the five us spent at least an hour just walking and talking and laughing while the waves lapped up at our feet._

_I didn’t even realize I was holding her hand the whole time until Mani made a joke about her being so small, I had to make sure the waves weren’t going to carry her away. Ally laughed and Dinah just smiled at us knowingly and I have never appreciated a sunburn so much in my life because nobody could tell how much I was blushing._

_We ended up stumbling into this secluded little cove and Dinah ran off immediately for pictures, with Mani trailing close behind. I swear, the two of them have to take pictures of everything._

_Ally excused herself to go keep an eye on ‘the trouble makers,’ and then suddenly we were alone._

_And I wanted to kiss her._

_It was the first time I thought about it. I was only fourteen and I’d never kissed anybody, never really wanted to kiss anybody, but the sun made her skin look like gold and her eyes look like honey and when she curled her lips into a smile I didn’t even feel afraid. She made me feel strong._

_So I kissed her._

_And I swear, every single cliche you’d ever heard about a first kiss is an understatement. Fireworks couldn’t even touch the nuclear war in my skin. She tasted like salt and watermelon and in that fleeting moment where her lips were on mine, the concept of time was absolutely meaningless. I kissed her forever. She tasted like forever. And when I pulled away and saw her smiling with her eyes still closed, I saw the face of forever._

_I was fourteen years old and it was my first kiss and I didn’t know a single thing except that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her._

_Instead, I got 4 years, 3 months, and 6 days._

_-Hers, forever & always.   _


	6. 3.5.15//2

_3.5.15_

 

_I had no idea what I was doing._

_I kissed her, and then I did absolutely nothing._

_It wasn’t that I was afraid, or that I thought she didn’t feel the same way I did. It wasn’t even the whole revelation that I liked a_ girl.

_I just had no idea what to do. I didn’t know if we were supposed to talk about it or pretend it never happened; if I was supposed to stop holding her hand or if I was supposed to start kissing her goodbye; if I was supposed to ask her on a date or to be my girlfriend or if it was too soon or already implied._

_I had absolutely no idea and so I did nothing._

_She still waited for me outside when Monday rolled around though, and she still grabbed my hand and let me walk her to class and we still walked home from school together and nothing really changed, except for everything._

_Looking back on it, I think we just sort of came to a silent agreement because neither of us knew what we were supposed to do or how to talk about it. We still went out with our friends, except she sat under my arm at the movies instead of loudly whispering over a bowl of popcorn with Dinah; she still came to all my softball games, except she always wore my extra jersey with my name and number printed boldly across the back; we still went to the diner after Friday night basketball games, except we split a chocolate milkshake even though I never liked chocolate before her._

_And every time we went our separate ways on the walk home from school, she kissed me on the cheek goodbye._

_It went on like that for a month and then I decided that I didn’t care how soon it was or how young we were or how much I had no idea what I was doing. I needed her._

_You probably think I’m crazy - probably think we both were. We were_ kids. _Barely teenagers. How could I have possibly been so sure of her, right? My parents said the same thing, when I eventually told them. The thing is, though, there’s no words to describe it. I just_ knew. _It wasn’t even a question. There was never a what-if, a might-have, a maybe._

 _I_ knew. _Right from the start,_ I knew.

_I was fourteen years old and I hadn’t even asked her to be my girlfriend yet, but two days before I did I went to sleep with a promise to God on my lips that one day I’d marry her._

_You’d laugh if you knew me. My fifth grade speech as student council president had an entire section outlining the patriarchal constructs of marriage in our society and why, as women, we should all be opposed to the myth of the “Nuclear Family and American Dream” because it’s all just legalized heteropatriarchal oppression designed to uphold male dominance and we keep enforcing it with our internalized misogyny in a vicious cycle that’s never going to end until we come together and make it._

_Heavy shit for a fifth grader, I know. The rest of the school body stared at me like I was speaking another language, and honestly, for a bunch of ten year olds, I probably was. I was passionate kid with a thirst for knowledge and an interest in politics, though, and it showed._

_But four years later I made a promise I’ll never get to keep because she made me question everything I’d ever believed in._

_So I finally asked her to be my girlfriend one night when I couldn’t take the uncertainty anymore._

_I don’t know if it was the teenage hormones, or the all around weirdness that is the entirety of middle school, or all those old romance movies she always made me watch with her (her favorite was Romeo and Juliet - what a sick twist of fate, right?), that made me do it, but honestly, I don’t think it matters._

_It was two in the morning and I couldn’t sleep because my dad made a comment at dinner that I should never let myself fall for a boy that won’t call me his girlfriend because no label means no commitment. I needed her to know I was committed. It’s so strange to look back on, because I didn’t even consider that I wanted her to be committed to me. I just needed her to know that I was committed to_ her.

_So even though it was raining and I had a history test the next day and it was surprisingly cool out for an early October in Miami, even though it was the middle of the night and she was definitely sleeping, even though the only bike in the garage had a partially flat tire and I was still in my pajamas and my mom would never let me leave the house again if I got caught, I decided I needed to ask her right then and there._

_It’s funny, how everything seems like the most important thing in the world at that age. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t, though. Even now, I think it was the most important thing I ever did. I couldn’t have waited another 12 hours._

_So I rode three miles in the rain on a bike with a semi-flat tire in the middle of the night in my pajama shorts and slippers. I thought about texting her to come outside, but I realized I left my phone plugged in on my nightstand and it’s not like she would’ve woken from a text anyway - that girl could’ve slept through a war._

_So I took a handful of pebbles from their neighbor's landscape and silently thanked my dad for signing me up for softball all those years ago as I tossed them at her window, and I know, the Romeo-and-Juliet-ness of it all wasn’t lost on me either. But it was her favorite, it was always her favorite, so I just threw one handful after another until the front door swung open._

_It was her dad. He wasn’t happy._

_He let me in, though. He even let me go upstairs. He said as long as I stopped throwing rocks at_ his _window, he was too tired to care what I was doing there. I swear, I thought it was her room. My luck, I guess. I go all out on some Romeo and Juliet type shit, and I wind up accidentally Romeo-ing her father._

_He still won’t let me live that down._

_I almost changed my mind when I got into her room. She looked so peaceful sleeping; I didn’t want to wake her up. I remember wondering if that’s what angels look like._

_I don’t know if she heard me, or if she just felt someone watching her, but it only took a few seconds before her eyes fluttered open. I think she thought it was a dream at first._

_I just kind of blurted it out as soon as she was conscious enough to sit up. She ran a hand through her hair and rubbed her eyes and I felt the words fall out of me before I even meant to say them. I swear I had a whole romantic speech planned but I forgot every word of it as soon as she looked at me. I practically shouted it - “will you be my girlfriend?” - and I’ll never forget the confused look on her face._

_I thought I fucked up at first. I thought I read it all wrong and she was about to freak out. But she just cocked her head to the side and said, “I thought I already was?” with a tired yawn._

_Her mom drove me home after that, and I think she knew. My cheeks were burning by the time we made it back to my house because I couldn’t stop smiling the whole way - that full, toothy smile that crinkles all the way up to your forehead and makes you look like a crazy a person. I couldn’t stop though. I’m pretty sure I_ giggled. _Me. You’d laugh at that, too, if you knew me. Her mom had to know something._

 _Nobody is that bubbly soaking wet at two in the morning without a reason. Certainly not_ me. _Except that night, I was, because even though_ apparently _she’d been my girlfriend for a month without me even realizing it (we still_ ~~_fight_ ~~ _fought about when_ exactly _we started, because she was always so adamant it was that day on the beach but I think I should get the credit for my Shakespeare-esque adventure that night), it was official and real and everything I never knew I wanted._

 _I was fourteen and she was thirteen and neither of knew a damn thing about romance or love, but_ something _in us knew, even then, that we belonged together._

_-Hers, forever & always. _


	7. 3.6.15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This may or may not have been loosely inspired by that one scene with Shane & Carmen...you know the one. Unless you don't know the one in which case disregard this & let me keep wallowing in my poor Sharmen feels.

_ 3.6.15 _

_ We’d only been together for 3 days when we had our first fight.  _

_ Honestly, it’s one of my favorite memories of her. I know that sounds weird - what kind of psychopath enjoys a memory of fighting with her dead girlfriend, right? - but just hear me out. _

_ It was the first in a long, long series of ridiculous fights. Our relationship was full of them - she cried once, when I put the straw in my drink before I put the straw in hers, because apparently that meant I didn’t love her anymore; on her sixteenth birthday, we got into a screaming match in front of her whole family over whose last name we’d keep we’d keep when we got married (even worse, I was arguing for  _ her  _ name, while she argued for  _ mine);  _ once, we even went two full days without speaking to each other, until her mom showed up on my doorstep telling me to get over myself, because the drama was all over an argument on whether Dinah or Normani would be the godparent of our hypothetical child. _

_ Like I said - we had a lot of stupid fights. The first one, though, was definitely my favorite.  _

_ It was friday and I woke up late so my mom had to take me to school, which she was far from happy about. My relationship had never been  _ great  _ with my mother, it was like I could never do anything right and my siblings could never do anything wrong, but it was tolerable then. Things didn’t get bad until I told her I had a girlfriend, which, okay, I could’ve done it in a way that wasn’t kissing said girlfriend in the middle of a restaurant during a family reunion, but that’s a story for another time.  _

_ My mom was just being her passive aggressive self with me that morning on the way to school, and so when I finally got to my first period class fifteen minutes late, I wasn’t in the greatest mood. I didn’t even realize I never got a good morning message (she always woke up first, had to see the sunrise every morning). I didn’t see her until lunch and that’s when I noticed something was off. She wouldn’t look at me or talk to me and when I finally asked her what was wrong, she just looked at me incredulously and said, “I just can’t believe you would do that.”  _

_ I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.  _

_ She ignored me until I finally cornered her after school and she told me the problem was that I kissed Brad Simpson, except I didn’t. _

_ “I know that,  _ Lauren,”  _ I remember her saying when I denied it, my name drawn out like an insult on the tip of her tongue, “but I still had to watch it happen. I just don’t know why you would do something like that? Why would you kiss him?” _

_ I didn’t know what to do other than continue assuring her that I didn’t.  _

_ She continued to tell me about magic carpets, “like the one from Aladdin,” and said we all rode them  around the skatepark, and how the clouds were pink and so close we could touch them - she said they tasted like cotton candy. I let her ramble until she mentioned a teenage Frankie Avalon crawling out of the half-pipe to serenade me and Brad while we kissed. _

_ Then I asked her what kind of drugs she was on and she looked at me like  _ I  _ was the crazy one.  _

_ “In my  _ dream, _ ” she’d clarified, and everything was suddenly a lot less confusing and a lot more hilarious. She didn’t find it as funny as I did, though.  _

_ “Why would you do that?” she’d repeated again, before storming off. I tried to chase after her, but she wouldn’t listen to me. I followed her home trying to apologize for what dream-me did, but she just slammed the door in my face and told me to go hang out with Brad.  _

_ I ended up sitting on her porch for almost an hour before her mom got home and let me inside. I ran up the stairs and threw the bedroom door open with a full speech prepared about getting over the ridiculousness that this entire situation turned out to be, but she had her hands wrapped around my neck before I’d even stepped all the way into the room. She apologized and we both laughed about it and I teased her about how weird her dreams always were until I couldn’t anymore.  _

_ I honestly don’t know if I’ll ever be able to fall in love again.  _

_ Who else in the world would get mad at me for something I did in a dream? Who else could get mad at me for something so stupid and I would only find it endearing?  _

_ She was it for me, I think.  _

_ -Hers, forever & always. _


	8. 3.9.15

_3.9.15_

 

_We had to write a poem about the color of love in English class today. If that wasn’t bad enough, the teacher told me I could be excused from the assignment if I needed._

_Everyone keeps treating me like I’m fragile, like they’re afraid of me breaking._

_Just because I purposefully wrapped my mom’s car around a pole 3 months ago, just because I still can’t make myself say her name, it doesn’t mean I need them to coddle me._

_I only wrote a single line for my poem -_

_‘Love is brown, six feet of brown, brown like the dirt she’s buried in.”’_

_I don’t know if that fit the assignment, I knew the teacher expected a pile of “love is red” bullshit, but love isn’t red to me. It’s brown like her eyes, like her hair, like the sand on the beach the first time we kissed. It’s brown like guitar she used to strum on while singing love songs, it’s the color of the comforter the first time we had sex._

_Love is brown - it was always brown._

_I guess I could’ve lied and just wrote something cheesy to fulfill the assignment, but she always told me that the only way writing meant anything was if you told the truth. So I did._

_Because she meant everything._

_-Hers, forever & always. _


	9. 3.10.15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, sorry it's been a while. I have good news though! I started writing Gold Dust Woman again - I'm about halfway done with the next chapter so it should be up hopefully soon!! Also, I started writing an AU called Pale Fire so check that out if you get the chance, please. Thanks for reading (:

_ 3.10.15 _

 

_ We were together for two weeks when she told me that we had to tell her parents.  _

_ I wish I could say that I wasn’t nervous, but in all honesty, I was terrified. We went to her house after school on Friday, and I was so nervous waiting for her parents to get home that I couldn’t do much other than pace through the living room. She didn’t seem to have a care in the world, though. I could hear her in the kitchen making Mac n Cheese and belting out One Direction songs while I burned a hole in the carpet. By the time her mom finally got home, I was just standing in front of the coffee table, staring blankly at the Tv.  _

_ It was off.  _

_ It felt oddly professional, for something that should’ve been familiar. I felt like we were at a doctor’s office - like it was some kind of therapy. We were on one couch, facing her parents and her sister. It was silent and the air was thick and I don’t think I would’ve been able to think of the words to tell them even if she hadn’t interrupted my thought process to just blurt it out.  _

_ That was something she did a lot - blurting, I mean. She had no grace when she was nervous. No tact. And she couldn’t keep a secret to save her life.  _

_ I fucking loved it.  _

_ Her mom smiled, and her sister scrunched her eyebrows, and her dad just looked relieved. I wish my family reacted the way hers did. Her mom just smiled softly and asked how long - I told her it’d been since the day she had to drive me home in the middle of the night. Then I was pushed off the armrest of the couch by the scowling girl next to me, and she told her mom we’d been dating longer, I just didn’t know it. I rolled my eyes, but I didn’t bother to correct her.  _

_ Her dad just mumbled “gracias a dios” and let out a breath none of us realized he’d been holding.  _

_ “I thought I was going to have to get ready for a grandbaby,” he had sighed, visibly relaxing, like the bomb we’d dropped on them wasn’t even burning. Maybe it wasn’t a bomb at all. Not to them, anyway.  _

_ Her face was red when he said it. Redder than I’ve ever seen it.  _

_ “Dios mio, papi! I’m not pregnant!”  _

_ He looked me up and down with a smirk before he said, “clearly.”  _

_ Then everyone seemed to remember we were freshman in high school and the pregnancy jokes turned into a list of rules about open doors and sleepovers.  _

_ Maybe I’m weird, but I’d never felt more accepted than I did in that moment, with her dad explaining everything I wasn’t allowed to do.  _

_ It felt so normal.  _

_ The bedroom door was to stay open, unless we were hanging out with the other girls. I was still allowed to spend the night, but I had to sleep on the couch. She was allowed over at my house, too, but she wasn’t allowed to spend the night until they talked to my parents, and that wasn’t going to happen any time soon.  _

_ In all honestly, it was the only list of rules I was ever excited to follow. I wanted to prove to them that I deserved their daughter, and it stuck with me for years. I remember being sixteen years old, a bag of weed in my backpack next to my second truancy letter, and I’d still nudge her door back open with my foot whenever she tried to push it shut.  _

_ I was a rule breaker - always have been - but she was the exception.  _

_ She was always the exception.  _

_ Her sister asked if I had cooties, when her dad finished his list of rules that wasn’t really a list at all. I told her everyone has cooties, but the trick is to find someone with the same kind of cooties as you. She asked if I had the same kind of cooties as her sister and when i replied with “I sure hope so,” she just smiled and said the hoped so too.  _

_ It all felt so right.   _

_ It felt like home.  _

_ And now, nothing does.  _


End file.
